Updated Publishing Schedule

It is very difficult to predict when authors will finish their works – also for the authors. Writing a book, even about chess, is an unpredictable business, and so is the life of the chess professionals we prefer as authors to our books. For example, Mihail Marin was working on his book on the English opening, when one chapter spun “a bit” out of control and ended up being 700 pages in draft form. Once edited and polished, this will be an entire book, and we had to split it in two. Another example, Boris Avrukh, working on GM Repertoire 2, is coming towards the end, but the theory keeps moving and he keeps getting good invitations to tournaments, which we always encourage him to play, should he want to.

Having come with this disclaimer, here is the latest publishing schedule.

Ftacnik, Kopec & Browne: Champions of the New Millennium September 9, 2009

Mihail Marin: Grandmaster Repertoire 3 – The English Opening vol. 1 September 9, 2009

Marin/Garrett: Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 September 30, 2009

Tibor Karolyi: Genius in the Background September 30, 2009

Boris Avrukh: Grandmaster Repertoire 2 – 1.d4 Volume Two October 15, 2009

Jacob Aagaard: Attacking Manual Volume 2 October 15, 2009

Jacob Aagaard: Attacking Manual Volume 1 2nd edition October 15, 2009

John Shaw: Quality Chess Puzzle Book November 15, 2009

Boris Alterman: White Gambits November 15, 2009

Artur Yusupov: Boost your Chess 1 December 1, 2009

John Shaw: The King’s Gambit December 15, 2009

Mihail Marin: Grandmaster Repertoire 4 – The English Opening vol. 2 January 15, 2010

30 thoughts on “Updated Publishing Schedule”

  1. Abramov Anjuhin

    You can call me headstrong, but I do not mind.

    I stick to my never ending questins, who will write and when can we expect following books:

    1. KING’S INDIAN DEFENCE for the BLACK player

    2. GM Repertoire for WHITE: 1.e4 e5

    3. GM Repertoire for BLACK against 1.e4: RUSSIAN DEFENCE

    I’m the only one of the ever raising power: 1e4 players and KID players.

    Spasiba for reply 🙂

  2. @Abramov Anjuhin

    1) At least a year until the KID book, but no announcement of author yet. We do not like to make announcements too early, as we like to be sure that books we “promise” will really happen.

    2) Again, about a year away, as part of Jacob’s GM Repertoire on 1.e4.

    3) Never.

    You are welcome for the reply, and I would never dream of calling you headstrong.

  3. A few inquiries:

    1) Is it fairly accurate to say that Grandmaster Repertoire 2 will be in bookstores (Waterstones?) around November? (I am in the UK)

    2) How far has Ftacnik come upon writing Grandmaster Repertoire 5?

    Thank you

  4. John, I am maybe not 100% against a GM Petroff, but you are right, it has been a bit too much 1.e4 e5 lately.

    Nic

    1) I should think so. It usually lags a few weeks, however, I am not sure how successful Gazelle has been in putting our books in Waterstones. Probably you need to buy it from a chess retailer – who will also have it sooner.

    2) Alas, not far.

  5. I would like to suggest an interesting book!

    When I read various book about chess training/improvement, inter alia Nunn’s “Secrets of practical chess”, Tisdall’s “Improve your chess now!”, Hansens’ “How chess games are won and lost”, or Williams’ “How to build your opening repertoire,” I scrutinized following problems and omissions:

    1) which is right self-teaching way to train for a Elo 2000 player?

    – which areas to study, how much time to spent on various parts of chess
    – how should weekly training plan look like? how many hours to spend for example on openings, middlegame and endgame
    – which books and e-books are best to use in training
    – how to use computer chess program to improve grasped theory?

    2) how to build opening repertoire, but really how???

    – many authors give us just vague hints like “play according to your style, free time etc”, but this is just a big deception
    – one must try really hard to suggest and build up real repertoire when following criteria must be satisfied: correctness, main lines and second best lines, bullet-proof/high stamina lines, smoothness to other repertoire lines against other opening lines
    – above said must be realized in the form “play this and that line”, and so one: for example play Ruy Lopez against 1…e5 and follow it with variation x and so on

    Such real training manual for individuals, and not just for them, would be a total trendsetter book because we desperately need such one.

  6. Jeff Hall :
    What exactly is Boost Your Chess 1 by Yusupov?
    Thanks

    Jeff,

    It will be a book intended to help chessplayers improve, in the same style as the Build up you Chess series. That is, Yusupov shares his chess advice and then tests the reader’s understanding with a series of puzzles. Boost Your Chess 1 will be at the “Fundamentals” level, then Volume 2 at “Beyond the Basics” and 3 at “Mastery”. So the same structure as the Build up your Chess series.

  7. gentlemen, why is there a 4-month gap between both volumes of Marin’s English repertoire? is it for marketing reasons or do you need the time to put the finishing touches on volume 2?

  8. We are publishing them as they finish. Sure, we could publish them together, but it would be at the end of the period, not the beginning – and I think no one would be better off for it.

  9. Hi
    What abou an appetizer for the Marin-book? I would be glad to see a pdf-extract (2-3 pages) before it is published and i buy it…

  10. boki,

    We will see what we can do, but the main priority at the moment is the final editing and checking of the book. After it is away to the printer (maybe a week or so) there may be time to extract a few pages and put them on the site.

  11. Alexei, your ideas are not new. I have shared them for a long time. Only, there are so many interesting books to do, and at the moment we are focussing on opening books. I have asked a few people who are worthy for the job to do a book on opening preparation, but they turned it down. It is not an easy job and not many can do it well.

  12. Jacob Aagaard :
    I have asked a few people who are worthy for the job to do a book on opening preparation, but they turned it down. It is not an easy job and not many can do it well.

    Only because of that you have to be a trendsetter! Is it hard to write such books, OK, we don’t care, we will make a masterpiece. That’s the spirit.

  13. We try to publish at least 10 masterpieces a year. Forgive us if this is all we can do, and if we cannot cover all innings in even a few years…

  14. @boki : I doubt very much Jacob will tell you it isn’t worth AT ALL to buy the new book – in spite of all his honesty 😉

    Besides, I take the occasion to thank the whole Quality Chess team for their work: it is great to find a publishing house (not only in chess, in fact) which maintains such a high standard of work and tries as hard as possible to keep their readers informed.
    Long life to Quality Chess ;-), and I’m eagerly waiting for the next books (Marin’s in particular) !

  15. Thanks for the fine remarks.

    I actually do not think that the second volume of book one is that interesting for those who have read the first edition. Some typos have been corrected, the typesetting has been greatly improved and three new games have been added.

    I know many were turned off by the typesetting of the first volume, so we changed it with the print run running low and the second volume coming out soon.

    The second volume is of course a completely new book. It looks as if it will be 500 pages and I think it is ok.

    Jacob

  16. Hi, I’m just wondering if you have considered publishing your books as cbv-files as well, like Everyman is doing? – It would be nice to be able to click thru a *good* ebook for a change! 🙂

    The advantages are obvious: most readers will save a lot of time & effort (and postage) on not having to click in the moves on their laptops, and environmentally it will be reducing the need for paper and transport and you as publisher will also save time and effort on layout, printing, 2nd corrected edition etc etc.

    And if you publish some books only in cbv you’ll be able to publish a lot more masterpieces much quicker! 🙂

    I guess torrent sites is the only deterrent, though actually the threat may be stronger than the execution in that case; and besides there may be ways to offer extra perks to those who buy the ebook from your server thus registering their email addresses…

    Well, it’s just a suggestion as I’ve noticed that I tend to buy many more chess books than I actually read/click in, which stresses me out when I see the pile growing… 🙁

  17. Abramov Anjuhin

    Warning! DO NOT make E-BOOKS!

    Why? On various internet sites dealing with torrents and other uploads one can find all Everyman e-books, so this is a rotten path for any publisher.

    And besides, everyone wants to have a good book in hands, so you’ll have many customers. But for e-books you’ll have only few, all others will just share it and get it for free.

    Last but not the least, learning process is much better when you have book in hands and execute moves on the board.

    Do not go astray with e-books, it will backfire heavily on your publishing house.

    I wrote this with best wishes. 🙂

  18. pgn files would be useful.

    last night i was working through Jacob’s “Attacking Manual 1”. didn’t have a board handy. so, where there were clusters of 5+ moves without a diagram, I had to skip over the actual moves being played and rely solely on the author’s commentary.

  19. There are no plans of making our books in part, annotated or not, available as PDF or any other format. We use all our time to produce the contents of the books and do not believe that the PGN-files would produce a product of similar quality, nor that it would be financially viable.

    But the main point is that we are book people. We are using all our energy producing books and have little time for experiments.

  20. it seems someone added links to excerpts of Champions of the New Millenium and Marin’s English repertoire, but neither link works…

  21. @Jacob Aagaard
    Alexei’s ideas is good, but you do not need a new book.

    After reading How Games a W L by Lars Bo Hansen y contacted the author with the same questions you mentioned

    “1) which is right self-teaching way to train for a Elo 2000 player?

    – which areas to study, how much time to spent on various parts of chess
    – how should weekly training plan look like? how many hours to spend for example on openings, middlegame and endgame
    – which books and e-books are best to use in training
    – how to use computer chess program to improve grasped theory?

    2) how to build opening repertoire, but really how???

    Lars gave me a customize “road map”, the result almost 100 rating points.

    In summary, at some point you need a coach to look over your games, books are great, they give us the opportunity to learn from outstanding GMs, but they are sort of a size fits all tool, if you want something more specific, I think a coach is the right choice.

    Miguel

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